AmericanPapist Comments
Thomas,
Random aside: if you want to get diacritical marks, you should be able to use the HTML character entities for that purpose. For instance:
ö -> ö
This is a portable way of doing it that should work across operating systems and browsers. A full list of them can be found here; preface each entity name with an ampersand and follow it with a semicolon, as in my example.
Pray pardon the random geekishness....
ALTAR GIRLS!
Yes, Fr McAfee, he would appear to have allowed them for years.
I remember reading the good Cardinal's lengthy catecheses on creation/evolution and thought they were excellent. I think he strays into dangerous territory, however, when he appears to be defending intelligent design theory's right to equal time. I believe (though not in the same way I believe the articles of the Catholic Creeds) that the methods of the natural sciences are sufficient to answer the questions proper to the natural sciences--and to the extent that they cannot, the theories need either tweaking, refining or dumping.
I am not a biologist. I am aware that there seem to be questions proper to the natural sciences that, to be honest, evolutionary theory and investigations under its banner have not satisfactorily answered. I also perceive that there are some (Richard Dawkins notable among them) who purport to oppose evolutionary theory to religion, and to seek to make the methods of the natural sciences answer the questions proper to philosophy and religion.
Now, Cardinal Schönborn can tell the difference between atheism and scientific method--at least he's said so. I think that on a good day he would regard 'intelligent design' theory as straying beyond the bounds of scientific method. Therefore, it shouldn't be getting equal time with the dominant theory in a scientific discipline.
All that said, it would appear that the Darwinist religion needs shooting down so that evolutionary theory can be refined in order to answer the questions it doesn't so far answer satisfactorily, but that can probably be done better by biologists using scientific methods than by philosophers and theologians (and these not necessarily, and probably not at all, Catholic).
How we got here is a question proper to the natural sciences. Why we're here, well, that's a whole other question.
No. Read Fides et Ratio and read Cardinal Ratzinger On the Nature and Mission of Theology. To separate how we got here from why we are here is the crux of the problem...the natural sciences must be subordinate to faith, because they are intrinsically incapable, as a method, of a complete and truthful answer to the question of the origin and end of man. Their method itself is an innate bias.
Schönborn needs to talk to some biologists because Evolution is one of the strongest theories in science.
Also, refusing to waste valuable class time to expose kids to nonsenseis not censorship; it is good policy. For example, in schools we do not teacn Holocaust denial, why? Because,like Evolution, the Holocaust is the most strongly documented event in human history. And while some minor details of the Holocaust are unknown or contested, the broad outline and most of the supporting detail is accepted without question.
But, using Schönborn's logic, a true liberal society would give David Irving equal time, because they need to hear the "debate".
Schönborn should stick to easier topics like Theology, and leave science to the experts.
O.K., Marie. There therefore must be a 'natural sciences' 'how' and a theological 'how'. How we got here in the purely physical, biological sense, is a question for the natural sciences. How we got here in a final sense, or if there is any final sense to how we got here, isn't. In fact, it's the more important question, and it's one that theology answers.
When I was in school, evolution was presented as a theory, albeit, a highly respected one. No professor said it was absolute fact. However, evolution has far more substance as a theory than "global warming by man" the political left's new religion. Tom
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